The Afro-Brazilian Sacred Narratives: Pàtàkìs and Symbolic Knowledge

• In Event: Afro-Asia in Latin America: Religion, Literature, and Film

Abstract

One of the oral texts most frequently used to meditate on the history of slavery comes from one of the 256 odus, or sacred stories of the Yoruba Ifá oracle. The Brazilians refer to the eighth odu of the Ifá oracle as okaran; in Cuba they call it ocana. This odu symbolizes transformation through tragedy and crisis, and teaches us that the key to a fruitful transformation is in negotiation and the joining of forces. The way in which the tale of the tragedy of the kingdom of Ejigbo is remembered in Brazil and Cuba, for example, is praxis of connecting chronologically distant and disconnected events so as to achieve a deeper understanding of present circumstances and historical events. Hence the meaning of the Yoruba concept of history, ìtàn, which can tàn “spread, open up, illuminate,” disentangle or de-riddle history, so as “to shed light on human existence through time and space.” The same practice is referred to by the Kongo as zingumuna and zinga, an understanding of the interrelation between the past, the present, and the future as a process of rolling and unrolling the scroll of time. This paper analyzes a selection of Candomblé pàtàkìs as an oratory tradition that honors the culture of the knowledge of symbolic language. According to Muniz Sodré, this is a knowledge “defined by a flux of forces that depend on the existence of an individual (here and now) and by the continuous sliding of meanings in a defined space (the absolute indetermination of beings). Symbolic knowledge is not transmitted through axiomatic enunciations, but through narratives, usually short stories that can be adapted to various circumstances in time and place.”

Author

• Isis C McElroy, Arizona State University